Posts tagged ‘media bias’

BAGHDAD (AP) — Sometime soon, the U.S. military will suffer the 4,000th death of the war in Iraq.

When the 1,000th American died in September 2004, the insurgency was just gaining steam. The 2,000th death came as Iraq held its first elections in decades, in October 2005. The U.S. announced its 3,000th loss on the last day of 2006, at the end of a year rocked by sectarian violence.

The 4,000th death will come with the war further out of the public eye, and replaced by other topics on the front burner of the U.S. presidential campaigns.

*blah blah blah*

Retired Army Gen. Barry McCaffrey said during a recent speech at the Council of Foreign Relations in New York that the situation for U.S. soldiers in Iraq is ”infinitely better” now that during 2006, when Americans were losing the equivalent of a battalion — about 600 to 1,000 soldiers — a month to deaths and injuries.

But McCaffrey said the U.S. military is being drained of its energy and morale because of the slow pace of training that will allow more Iraqi soldiers to take over the fight. American soldiers, he said, are ”becoming increasingly unsure about the position they’ve been placed in.”

The Bush administration has credited an increase of 30,000 troops for a decrease in violence, which it says has improved the lives of ordinary Iraqis.

In the poll, however, more than half the Iraqis, 53 percent, felt that the rapid buildup of U.S. troops in Anbar province and in Baghdad has made overall security worse, not better. Even those negative findings, however, were a sharp improvement since a similar poll last August. Then, 70 percent said the American buildup had made matters worse in the areas it had emphasized. Only 18 percent said it had improved their conditions then, compared with 36 percent now.

The nationwide poll found the Iraqis’ negative assessment of the rapid troop buildup came from all categories of respondents. Still, the poll responses reflected the overall improved assessment of conditions now as opposed to August, the month after the buildup was fully in place.

Regarding security, political dialogue, ability of the Iraqi government and economic development, 42 percent to 53 percent of the respondents found the situation worse. Those findings were down by 17 points to 27 points from the same questions eight months ago.

”Direct ratings of the surge likely reflect the United States’ general unpopularity,” the poll’s writers said. When ”viewed through the filter of general antipathy toward the United States,” they wrote, the drop in negative sentiment is notable.

And here in the real world, the Surge seems to be responsible for, or at least linked to a wide variety of positive developments in Iraq. Sectarian deaths are down over 50% (more than 80% in Baghdad) compared to late 2006. Attacks on civilians are down over 50%. Attacks on Coalition and Iraqi forces are down 90%. Things are so much better in Fallujah, the former epicenter of Sunni insurgency, that there are only 250 US marines there, instead of the 3,000 garrisoning the city at the beginning of last summer.

If you don’t believe these numbers — and there is often good reason for skepticism about statistics from Iraq, whether they are the fantasy death tolls dreamed by Britain’s Lancet or the statistics collected by US and Iraqi authorities — then the data collected by anti-war groups like icasualty.org also seem to indicate a precipitous drop.

(Lots more at the link)

You can see this most depressingly in a widely cited article by Michael Kinsley which asserts that the Surge is a not a success because it has not ended quickly enough. Kinsley concedes, in a sarcastic tone that “the surge is a terrific success. Choose your metric: attacks on American soldiers, car bombs, civilian deaths, potholes. They’re all down, down, down. Lattes sold by street vendors are up. Performances of Shakespeare by local repertory companies have tripled.”

The irony is amusing in a way, though its implications reveal something ugly. For him the metrics are a joke. Either because he can’t imagine or empathize with the suffering inflicted by a marketplace bomb or an IED, or because the lives of Iraqis and of American troops simply don’t count compared to a rhetorical point scored against a hated President.

And the dinosnore enemedia wonders why people aren’t reading their papers? Could it be because they are trying to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat?

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I can’t tell you much this sickens me to read…mostly because I know it’s true.

Lt. Col. Jeffrey Chessani is a 19 year veteran of the US Marine Corps, with tours of duty in Panama, the Persian Gulf and three tours of Iraq. He is also a man whose well documented, and heroic, career is on hold right now because of the accusations of one man: John Murtha, American Congressman, who went on national television and accused the Marines of killing innocent civilians in cold blood. Lt. Col. Chessani swore an oath on joining the military to defend America against all “enemies, foreign and domestic”. As has been seen repeatedly throughout the current war, it is the domestic enemies that people like the Lt. Col. most have to defend themselves against.

A Jan. 10 Associated Press story begins: “Nine American soldiers were killed in the first two days of a new offensive to root out al-Qaida-in-Iraq fighters holed up in districts north of he capital. …

“The losses came as many enemy militants fled U.S. and Iraqi forces massing in Diyala” — a lot of those guerrillas fleeing north into the province of Salahuddin — AP correspondent Christopher Chester continues.

Read down to the seventh paragraph — halfway through the story. There, we finally learn that our troops “killed 20 to 30 insurgents in the first two days of the operation,” including some in attacks in Salahuddin province.

Now, I’m one who thinks we shouldn’t be in Iraq, at all. In the end, we’ll tacitly endorse some strongman who’ll let us maintain a few military bases in the region — a deal we probably could have cut with Saddam Hussein. Then we’ll declare “victory” and come home.

But if the news report above had been written by the kind of reporters who covered our advance through German-occupied France in 1944, I’ll bet it would have started off:

“Badly disciplined enemy fighters dressed in dirty rags, abandoning the women and children they had vowed to protect, scampered like scared rabbits ahead of advancing American soldiers and their allies in Diyala Province this week. They thought they could find safety in Salahuddin province to the north, but Maj. Gen. Mark P. Hertling’s boys were ready for them there, too. Hertling estimates 20 to 30 enemies died, despite the fact they ran like shrieking monkeys ahead of a forest fire.

“Nine American soldiers died, six in a booby-trapped house in Diyala. The reason American soldiers die in booby-trapped houses, soldiers at the front explained, is because our rules of engagement place the protection of civilians — even those who have harbored the enemy — above the safety of our own boys. Otherwise, neighborhoods could be ‘cleared’ by artillery fire, rather than more dangerous house-to-house searches designed to spare civilian lives.”

The newspaper stories on June 7, 1944, didn’t lead off, “Thousands of Americans died on some beach in France yesterday,” implying Congress should investigate how those sad sacks in the U.S. Army had bungled things again, did they? No, I think they said something more like, “The issue is not yet decided, many brave boys gave their lives yesterday, but the liberation of Europe has begun. Our guys hit the beaches at dawn, overran all opposition by noon, and kept on going.”

Each way of reporting the news is “true.” But the second version gives you a little different feeling about how things are going, doesn’t it?

He continues from there and it’s worth your time to pop over and read what he says. Another hat-tip to freema for pointing me to this article!

Mark Twain said a lot of things wittier and funnier. But he never said anything more valuable than this: A man who can read – but does not, has no advantage over a man who cannot read.

He’d probably also agree that a nation free to tell itself the truth -but does not, has no advantage over a dictatorship. Media coverage of Iraq these days makes me fear we have become that nation. Some comparisons, please.

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"The American media....is free to differentiate between the torture of Abu Ghraib Prison and the beheading of innocent hostages. The fact that they shamelessly tilt their coverage toward the horrors of Abu Ghraib while underplaying the beheadings, accompanied by internet gloating, sends a message something akin to: Well, if you're going to force an Islamic prisoner to put women's panties on his head you may as well go ahead and cut it off. It really amounts to just about the same thing!" ~ Barry Farber